After the Apocalypse
by jiapet
Summary: Takes place after Not Fade Away. Ties up loose ends about AngelCordy, Connor, FredIllyria, Wesley, Gunn, W&H, the slayers, and most importantly the Shanshu prophecy. Old friends may pay A.I. a visit. This is what season six should've been.


Author's Note: First of all I have to say that none of the characters belong to me and all the rest of that general disclaimer stuff you already know. Secondly, this is my first Angel fic and I really hope you guys enjoy it. Please read and review; and feel free to contact me—I would love to hear feedback.

_Prologue_

_"So," said Angel, dropping his sword tiredly to his side._

_"So," said Spike. He squinted his eyes into the dark alley. Thousands of mutilated demon corpses lay strewn about, and those that hadn't already gone up in flames or disintegrated on their own accord were beginning to do so. The heavy downpour had ceased and dirty rainwater was slowly streaming toward the street facing the alley, thick with blood (both demon and human) and dust._

_Angel didn't know how to interrupt the stillness. They had just slain thousands upon thousands of hideous beasts from hell dimensions that he had never even heard of, and he was surprised that he had even made it out alive. Well, figuratively at least. He, Spike, Gunn, and Illyria were outnumbered and outranked, but they had fought like champions. Now after the battle, with only Spike standing in the alley with him, Angel was lost for words._

_"Guess we should clean up this mess." He gestured toward the remaining bodies with his sword._

_"Bugger that," said Spike. He leaned against a slime-covered alley wall. "I'm tired."_

_"Yeah," replied Angel. He didn't argue. "You think Illyria got Gunn to the emergency room okay? She should've been back by now." They had agreed to regroup in the alley before taking the next step of action._

_"I suppose so," Spike answered halfheartedly, poking at a leathery demon arm with the tip of his sword. "Not like we're in much of a hurry though." He glanced up at Angel. "Got no place to go."_

_"One of us should've gone instead. What was I thinking, sending her off with Gunn like that? The hospital won't know what to do with a speechifying blue god-king," said Angel. He was talking very fast._

_"This is LA," said Spike. "Goths, punks, god-kings… what hasn't this lousy town seen? No one's going to look twice at them. 'Sides, you know the both of us put together couldn't have gotten him to the hospital half as fast."_

_"Maybe we should check up on her," Angel said, ignoring him._

_Spike raised an eyebrow. "Won't do any good, mate. Blue's probably gone back to Cyvus Vail's."_

_"What—why?" asked Angel._

_Spike paused for a moment before he spoke. "Wesley."_

_Angel opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it again. He looked down at his fist; it was caked with demon blood. Then after a long silence, he said quietly, "We should go. For Wesley. I mean, for his body. Yeah, we should go get it."_

Chapter One - Resurrection 

The room was dim and still. A single beam of light shone through a narrow chink in the blood-red curtains; its welcoming rays fell gently into the room. Tiny motes of dust danced and swirled gracefully within its golden-yellow radiance. It illuminated a patch of the once brilliantly sanguine rug that had become dull and faded with years of attrition and even more years of neglect. The walls, painted with a deep shade of sepia, were meagerly adorned—a painting of a young boy and his dog hung by the window—its corners were shrouded in darkness. In one corner was a small armchair, in which a tired woman rested her eyes. Her head drooped slightly forward and her long red hair fell elegantly from her shoulders. An open book lay in her lap, and a lukewarm glass of tea sat on the spindly nightstand beside her. Next to the nightstand was a large bed, and underneath its covers a sleeping man had begun to stir.

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce slowly opened his eyes. He squinted into the dark room before him, and gave his eyes a few minutes to adjust. He tried to sit up and painfully realized that every bone in his body was sore. He managed to elevate himself a few inches, and he saw a red figure resting at his bedside. He recognized her instantly and smiled.

"Willow," he said weakly. His voice was hoarse and grated against the silence.

The young woman's eyes quickly sprang open at the sound of her name. She lifted her head, her eyes wide with a mixture of pleasure and surprise.

"Wesley! You're back!" she smiled.

"Yes," Wesley mused, "so it appears."

"How are you feeling?" Willow, seeing Wesley's struggle, quickly got to her feet and helped him sit upright, moving the pillow that was on her chair to pad his back. "Here, this is for you," she handed him the glass of tea.

"Quite alright, thank you," replied Wesley, "though I'm fairly certain that a moment ago I was dead." He slowly sipped from the tea. _Jasmine_, he thought. It felt cool against his parched lips and soothed the soreness in his throat. He relaxed a little.

"Oh," said Willow, sitting back down. "You were. Dead, that is. B-but only for a few weeks. Your body had hardly begun to decompose, don't worry."

"That's… well, that's good to know. How did you manage the resurrection?" he asked curiously, "I thought the last urn of Osiris was destroyed. In Sunnydale, if I recall correctly."

"It was," said Willow enthusiastically. "But it turns out that Mostafa, one of our wizard contacts, wasn't being completely honest last time. You see, it's not so much as Osiris's _urn_ that holds the power of resurrection, but more like…" She trailed off.

"Yes?" Wesley prompted.

"Well, p-pretty much anything that, you know, contained… parts." Willow averted her eyes. "Or fluids," she added quietly. She avoided eye contact with him and pretended to be engrossed with a certain page in her spell book.

Wesley raised his eyebrows. "Do you mean to tell me that you used the chamber pot of Osiris to resurrect me from the dead?" He sounded amused.

Willow looked at him apologetically and nodded. The two of them laughed.

"Sorry, but I had to do it," she smiled, "Angel Investigations needs their book-man. They needed _you_, Wesley, I could feel it even through the phone."

"They called you and asked you to come?" Wesley asked. His face had become serious and Willow quickly sensed the change in his manner. Wesley didn't want to feel like a burden to anyone, especially not like he had been brought back to life as a favor for someone else.

"Well, yeah. I was in Africa at the time and I didn't plan on coming at first, Buffy and Giles' orders, you know, but I had to. You didn't hear how broken Angel sounded without you. Plus you died fighting the good fight… a mystical death too, who knew what had happened to your soul? I had to bring you back, Wesley. I had to."

Wesley remained silent for a moment before he spoke. "I appreciate what you've done for me, Willow, I really do, but you needn't have gone through all this trouble. I owe you a great deal… I owe you my life."

"You don't owe me anything, Wes. I wanted to help, I really did. You just keep saving the world from the mean bumpy-faces and demons, averting the apocalypse and all that other stuff, and as far as I know, we're even." She smiled again.

"Do Buffy and Giles know you're here?" Wesley asked.

"No, but I don't care if they find out," she answered. "There's nowhere I'd rather be right now than here in L.A. with a bunch of world-saving heroes. Besides, you're not at that evil law firm anymore, which is a big non-evilly plus. I know about what happened with the slayer Dana last year, Wes, and I'm sorry it ended the way it ended. The slayers didn't hate any of you at all, they were just being cautious."

Wesley was suddenly flooded with a deep appreciation for Willow's warmth, energy, and sincerity. "Thank you, Willow," he said. "Thank you for being the way you are."

"Why you're welcome! I do what I can," Willow beamed. "Hey, I'm going to go downstairs and tell the others that you're up. They're going to be so happy to see you." And with one last smile, she slipped out of the room and went downstairs into the Hyperion's main lobby.

Wesley's door slowly opened and Angel's apprehensive face slowly peered in. He caught Wesley's glance and relief flooded over him. He smiled broadly and relaxed, opening the door wide and looking back into the hallway.

"He's really back, guys," he said happily, "Wes is back."

Angel, Spike, and Gunn walked into Wes's room. Angel and Gunn were beaming, and even Spike had a smile on his face.

"Welcome back, Percy," he said as he walked over to Wesley's bed and slapped him hard on the back.

"Yeah, English, we thought we'd lost you back there," said Gunn, joining Spike.

"You did," replied Wesley. He took Gunn's hand and shook it warmly. "It's good to be back."

"It's good to have you back," said Angel.

"Hey I'm the only one of us who hasn't died yet," Gunn realized. "How'd it feel?"

Wesley thought about it for a moment. "Salty," he answered.

Everyone laughed.

"I thought it was more sulfuric myself, the second time around that is," said Spike.

"Well hey I'm just glad I didn't have to find out for myself," Gunn said. "But if it wasn't for Illyria I would have. She saved my life, rushing me to the emergency room."

Wesley hadn't thought about Illyria since he'd woken up, but at the mention of her name he realized that she wasn't present.

"Speaking of Illyria," Wes asked, "where is she?"

"Downstairs somewhere," Gunn replied. "Or on the roof. No one ever knows. You want us to bring her up here? I gotta warn you though, she's been acting weird lately."

Illyria had been acting strangely all summer, ever since Wesley had died. The others figured that her increased desire for destruction resulted from the fact that she was still in mourning, though they didn't exactly understand how former demon-gods mourned. In fact, Illyria herself didn't quite understand it either. Emotion was as new to her as the notion of mortal men ruling the earth. All she knew was that Wesley's death had affected her in some way. He agreed to be her guide, and he died. She thought of this as a lack of respect and was angry with him.

When she had found out that Willow ("the scarlet-headed witch") had arrived in L.A. to resurrect him from the dead, she retreated into a silence and had barely made any contact with Angel, Spike, or Gunn for the past week and a half. She spent most of her time out in the garden or on the roof, standing still for hours—sometimes days—just thinking about the last moments of Wesley's life.

Illyria had lied to him. When Fred's parents, Trish and Roger Burkle visited Wolfram & Hart a month ago, Illyria had assumed Fred's personality and form for her own curiosity. She wished to explore the broad range of emotions that Fred's shape could bring, especially in Wesley. Though he said he hated her pretending to be Fred, she could feel in him the desire for the shell, although it was empty of who he had loved.

During Wesley's death, however, Illyria's reason for the lie was completely different. She knew that Wesley was dying; she could feel the life rapidly leaving his body. She felt concern for him, which was something she had never felt for anyone before. At one time she had millions of loyal subjects who worshipped her every move, but she did not feel for any of them. Yet the bearded man who drank too much whiskey and insulted her, she had cared deeply about. This is what was puzzling Illyria at this very moment, as she stood motionless atop the Hyperion.

"No, no, don't bother," Wesley said. The last thing he needed right now was another reminder that Winifred Burkle was gone.

No one said anything for a while, until Spike relieved the awkward silence.

"How about me and Charlie boy here go back downstairs? Angel here looks like he's about to wet himself with anxiety wanting to talk with you alone." He said to Wesley.

"Shut up, Spike," Angel said. But he knew what Spike had said was true, which is probably what had bothered him so much. He hated when Spike was right. He had been wanting to speak with Wesley alone for a long time.

"Right, _boss_," Spike answered sarcastically. "Why don't you kiss my a—"

"We'll be downstairs if you need us," Gunn interrupted. He grabbed Spike's arm, pulled him through the door, and closed it gently shut.

"I'm going to dust him one of these days, I swear," said Angel angrily, his teeth and fists clenched.

"Angel..." said Wesley quietly, "have a seat." He motioned toward the armchair by his bed.

Angel trudged over and sat down. He leaned forward in his seat and looked at Wes gravely.

"Where were you Wes? You left us." He sounded hurt.

"Vail was too powerful a wizard, Angel, there was nothing I could do."

"You're lying," Angel answered bluntly. "You didn't try."

Wesley thought about it for a moment.

"I tried," he said. "I fought Vail, but I couldn't fight death. I didn't have a reason to."

"Yes you did," Angel said. The hurt in his voice was clearer now. "You had four reasons. Your friends, Wes, your friends who cared about you."

"Yes, yes," said Wesley quickly, "but I'd lost all reason. I lost Fr—wait a minute, Angel…" he paused for a moment, looking pensive.

"What is it, Wes?" Angel asked, worriedly.

"You said I had four reasons—four friends. Where's Lorne?"

The question had caught Angel off-guard. He knew that he'd have to explain Lorne's absence to Wesley at some point, but he didn't know that it would be so soon. He wasn't sure how to word what he was about to say.

"He left, Wes…" Angel said. "He's not coming back."

"I see," he replied. Wesley understood that Lorne was not a warrior, but he hadn't expected him to leave the cause. After all, they had fought together for almost four years. "Do you know where he is?"

"No, I don't," Angel replied sadly. "He said not to go looking for him."

"Well then," said Wesley. "We know one thing for sure—he's definitely not in Vegas." He managed a small smile.

"And he's definitely not coming back," added Angel.

"That can be said about too many of us these days," Wesley said sadly.

Angel knew immediately who he was talking about.

"I know you miss her," Angel said. "We all do."

The subject of Fred was still freshly painful in both of their hearts, but it was Cordelia who was on Angel's mind. The two men sat in a painful silence, both thinking about the women they had loved and lost. The women that they were still in love with.

"She wasn't there, Angel," Wesley said abruptly.

"What?"

"In heaven. Fred wasn't there."


End file.
